Marketing Happy Hour - Paid Search + Paid Social 101: Test and Learn | Andrew Harder of Cisco

Starting point is 00:00:00 you're listening to the marketing happy hour podcast where we discuss career and industry insights with our peers in marketing we're here to talk about it all like the ups and downs of working in social media how to build authentic relationships in the influencer and pr space managing a nine-to-five and a side hustle at the same time, how to be productive in your life and career without losing your sanity, and more. Ultimately, we're here to build a community with you because we're all trying to navigate the world of marketing together. Are you ready? Grab your favorite drink and join your hosts, Cassie and Erica, for this week's episode. This week, we're speaking with

Starting point is 00:00:53 Andrew Harder of Cisco for a conversation on all things paid media and B2B marketing. Andrew gives us some strategies to implement whether we're brand new to paid ads or more seasoned. We dive into Google, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram ads and which platform to choose depending on if you're capitalizing on established demand for a product or service or creating demand for a new concept. Grab your notebooks, your favorite drink, and let's dive in to this conversation with Andrew together. Erica, of course, before we kick off today's episode, I have to ask you a very, very important question. What's in your glass today? Well, today I have water per usual and a magic mind. Magic mind is a green productivity shot I recently discovered with ceremonial grade matcha and lion's mane mushrooms that makes me feel just more productive and focused when I

Starting point is 00:01:51 drink these throughout the day. I'm a big coffee gal, as you know, but I don't feel like I need as much caffeine when I'm drinking these in the morning. I feel focused and like ready for the day. So it's really great. Yeah, no, we're both indulging in magic mind today. And I completely agree. They're great. I'm a huge fan after using them for the last few days and being in a semi creative field. I personally find it very hard to concentrate on my tasks throughout the end of the day. My brain is shot about two, three o'clock each day. And so I love these because the nootropics inside of the shots helped me improve my productivity and focus throughout the whole entire day. So I don't hit that slump at any point. Yeah, that's the best. And you can hear that we're just raving

Starting point is 00:02:36 over here about them. So we're really excited to share that the magic mind team actually gave us a great offer to share with you. You can visit magic mind.co forward slash MHH and get up to 50% off your first subscription in the next 10 days with our code MHH20. That's MHH20. Okay, now we're ready to get into today's conversation with Andrew. Andrew, we're so excited to have you today and talk about all things paid media. It's something we haven't really gotten totally into on the podcast yet. But before we do that, what's the 411 on your career thus far? Could you just share with us your background and experience? Sure. So I mean, I love saying right off the bat, clearly, I did not go to school for B2B marketing because who does that?

Starting point is 00:03:25 I mean, I graduated a little over eight years ago. And yeah, I really just had no idea what I was going to do. So it was about a year after college that I started working at. It wasn't a startup, but it was a small SaaS company here locally where I live in Bloomington. And it was like marketing sales, recruiting. It was like everything. It was one of those things where it's like, you know, you're just at the bottom, you're like doing whatever needs to be done. So, um, I worked there for almost two years and I had like some just very basic, more traditional exposure to B2B marketing. Um, but I wanted to get more hard skills. And so that's why I went to a

Starting point is 00:04:06 local agency that was specialized in paid. And that's really where I started to learn a ton about paid search and then got into paid social, worked across B2B and B2C clients. But my largest client and really the bulk of my work there was with B2B SaaS. And so once I felt like I had a good grip on just like all the ad platforms and how to navigate that, how to like, you know, just handle large budgets. I, I knew I wanted to go in-house. I had no intention. Like when I started there, I remember talking to my supervisor at the time like why are why are some of our co-workers so obsessed with PPC like who cares about that like well who would ever like spend their time like writing about that and doing stuff and like I don't really talk about PPC that

Starting point is 00:04:55 much now but I totally like I mean I'm literally speaking on a marketing podcast right now I never would have thought I'd be doing that. But I love like, I love all things marketing. And my career has really, I still like focus on paid and growth aspects. But I'm in the last year become pretty obsessed with learning things about like content and just go to market strategies and really trying to evolve like from the more traditional tactics to just I like to call it just like common sense marketing and yeah so that's kind of my and I've been and sorry to close the loop on my progression I joined a series a start like it wasn't a startup but like series a um sas company called socio and i for whatever reason i've already been a part of like two acquisitions and we were acquired like four

Starting point is 00:05:53 months after i started by cisco and like in part of the webex um group so i've been there for um actually it'll be like it's almost two years exactly that i've been here um and so like man going from like series a like small lean marketing team, I was like hired with someone else. We were like, no marketers are more four and five. And then we like quadrupled in size in a year. And like, just for anyone in B2B, the last year has just been like the biggest roller coaster. So like scaling budgets, losing budget, getting budget back,

Starting point is 00:06:24 like diversifying what we're doing and being pushed to do other things. So yeah, that's my career so far. some smaller brand startups, but just overall for brands that haven't dabbled too much in paid spend, they're looking to get started. Maybe it's a fresh concept to them. Where do you recommend that brands get started or how do they know where to get started? Is it based off of objectives? If they're trying to drive to a website versus social channels? Like what would you recommend just from a starting place overall? Yeah. I mean, um, good question, obvious question. And then it's the, like so many factors, it depends, but I'll give you an actual, I'll give you an actual answer. Awesome. If I would say like, if you are in a more established market, like there's a ton of demand out there, like Google ads is just the

Starting point is 00:07:26 obvious place to start because it's easy to see what's working um you're you should see a return if if you have like a product that fits the need etc um and you can really narrow in on like what you're targeting because it's keyword based um so i would say start there and you can expand however big caveat everyone thinks that like like once you really scale paid search it's keyword based. So I would say start there and you can expand. However, big caveat, everyone thinks that like, like once you really scale paid search, it's like, you can keep doing that. There is for sure ceilings. Like I've seen it so many times because I've worked when I was at an agency, I worked across so many clients and there's just a certain limit. There are ways that you can grow, but it's more so like, I mean, there's going to be a cap on non-brand things, but as a brand,

Starting point is 00:08:06 like obviously if you're doing a lot of other things, like going to events, like doing just a ton of more like demand creation stuff, more on like the front end and building that it's long term and it takes time to do that, but you can scale that way. But it's not immediate. And like, I think that's the hard part with being in paid a lot of times. It's like, okay, we're going to give you like 10 grand. Like, what can we get for that? Like, sure. We can look at historical stuff, but like there's certain ceilings.

Starting point is 00:08:30 Um, so that's like kind of like part one of my answer. I would say if you're not in a defined category, um, and no one's like searching for your product or like your brand, you're kind of creating that maybe with a few other competitors, like search is probably not the best place to start. You're better off. Like I would say even like, you don't really need to do any type of paid until you have like a really clear, and this is for any, any company, but especially when you're getting started, like if you don't have a clear, like point of view or like a clear, like value prop, that's really obvious. And, um, you don't have a clear like point of view or like a clear like value prop, that's really obvious. And you don't have content to support that.

Starting point is 00:09:10 Like you're going to be spinning your wheels. So I think because I would say like paid social is a great spot for that. But because like, I mean, you can post on your organic page, your company page. But I mean, friends and family employees like like that's, who's going to see that. So like, that's where paid social is great. Cause you can really just put fuel on like whatever good content you have. And we can talk more about that, but yeah, I don't know. I guess I'll stop there and you can tell me if that made any sense, but that's what I would say. Yeah, no, absolutely. Thank you for sharing that. I completely agree. I think a lot of times brands or let's say bosses within a company who don't have a clear knowledge base of what a

Starting point is 00:09:54 customer needs to see when they land on a website, for example, is the value proposition clear? Is the problem and solution clear? Is how your brand is serving the customer clear. There's not a amount of paid social or paid ads that can help solve for that issue. So I love how you mentioned getting that value proposition honed down first so that when you do put paid spend behind a brand, that's going to be a lot more effective. So thank you for sharing that. But I'm curious to now moving forward and talking about the spend specifically. So in some of our preliminary conversations, you talked about efficient search spend. So would love to hear from you. How do you know that you're spending efficiently?

Starting point is 00:10:43 Yeah, great question. Probably a question everyone's asking right now and has been for the last six months or so. But I mean, the most important thing and like this is just talking about search, like you should be in talking B2B specifically, like you should have an idea of like the full funnel. Like for us, we use HubSpot ads. Like we're able to like track everything from like MQL to SQL opportunity to close one. Like at the end of the day, like, I mean, it's great if you can drive, you know, X amount of MQLs for X amount of cost per MQL, but it literally does not matter if one, you're not getting any quality conversations for your sales team. If you have a traditional, like, you know, sales go to market strategy, um, or like if, you know, you're getting those

Starting point is 00:11:30 conversations, but then like, nothing's progressing, you know, there's obviously a lot of other things that play into that. It's not really reflective on like your paid strategy. Like, okay. If you're getting people in the door talking to sales, like good conversations, like they're qualified, but like, you know, pricing, there's a, there's something off there or you're just like not a fit. Like, you know, there's a lot of other company wide problems that you might have to fix. But, so I would say like, you need to be able to track down that. And I think I see people talk about that all the time, especially like agencies, when they get clients, like they have no tracking set up, but they're spending literally like in some cases, hundreds of thousands of dollars, and they literally don't know what's going on because they don't have any tracking in place. So like, I mean,

Starting point is 00:12:13 that's just obvious for anyone that's been in paid. But I think the other aspect of that too, like you have to split if you have a ton of if you're bidding on brand terms, which most of the time, like does make sense, because your competitors are trying to steal your traffic. So you should do that. But there's always that conversation of like, how much should you should you be spending on that. But more importantly, like if you're looking at holistically at your, your ad spend, and you see like x amount of revenue, but that's like 90% brand, and you only have like 10% non brand, like you really need to split out by category and you can make it very simple, like brand non-brand, or you can segment non-brand a bit further with like, we call them like kind of like core non-brand campaigns,

Starting point is 00:12:55 like competitor campaigns, and maybe more like testing non-brand. So you can segment that out. And you can even look at, okay, how much are we paying like just initially for that, that leader, that MQL, whatever you call it, but then like, what's the cost per opportunity for those different things? And really like when I'm optimizing for efficiency, like, yes, I'm looking at like close one on revenue, but like, there's so many factors, like you can't always make decisions on, like, I would say typically you need to make decisions more around like the opportunity that that phase, because after that, there's only so much, there's nothing you can control with that. But you can look at just simply like a lot of wasted

Starting point is 00:13:36 spend to like, I think most companies now have probably eliminated that. But I mean, I've been in accounts where there's literally like 50% of the spend is on stuff that doesn't, it's not really converting at all. Or if it is, it's very like vanity focus. Like it's more like leads, like for contents or webinars. And it's like, that's probably not the best use of your money for that channel. So. Yeah, that's great. Thank you for that. And this is kind of piggybacking off of some of the tips you've already shared. So a few of the things we talked about was obviously, like we said, value proposition on your site, make sure that's clear and then have tracking in place and a few other great tips. But on top of that, that you shared specifically on Google search, do you have

Starting point is 00:14:20 any other tips for just really creating strong paid search ads, whether that's on the creative side or just setting it up in terms of keywords and things like that? Any other last tips to share on that point? Yeah, I can give a few like maybe quick obvious ones. But I again, like you'd be surprised sometimes, especially like you think like big corporation, you think like they're going to have everything figured out and that's not always the case. Or like, you know, startup newer company, there's just not resources, like people resources. And so things are just set up quickly and they're left and they're not checked.

Starting point is 00:14:56 So like the quick things are just simply like, you should be able to test that. The kind of mental tests that I have is if I go into an account, whether I'm looking at it for someone that I am working with, does this make sense? You don't have to know anything about the business, but if you open up the account and there's how the campaigns are labeled, how they're segmented, you should be able to see, is there some hierarchy? Is there some categorization and that it'd be like walking into a library and like, you don't know any of the books that are there, but like, you see the different like categories, like fiction, not et cetera, versus like you walk into a library and it's like the books are like all over the place. Maybe that's the kid's section and the kids did that.

Starting point is 00:15:38 But like, the point is like, you should be able to see like some type of segmentation um and then off of that too like just easy things like wasted spend can be you have you still have like google search partners enabled that's never a good thing especially if you're doing a lot of international stuff like just doing basic things like at looking at your search terms and seeing like what people are actually searching and what you're spending on so adding negative negative keywords, it's like, I've, I've posted about this before. It's like the unsexy stuff of PPC. Like you have to do that more dirty work and consistently, and there's ways you can automate that too. But I mean, that's, that's huge on just like the setup, but I think it obsess over that as much as you do like on the landing pages. And then like,

Starting point is 00:16:23 this gets into more of like the content side of the conversation but something i've found too is like you have all the right setup and like you're doing you're pulling all the levers that you can in google but then like your landing page sucks maybe like maybe the content is not great or maybe there's too much content and no one understands like what the heck your product is or you have like 500 buzzwords and no one knows like what like, what do you, what do you actually solve? Like, what is the pain point that you're solving for us? Or you're asking for like 20 fields on the demo form, like reduce that. Like no one wants to do that. Just like, like common sense things like that. So yeah, hopefully that helps some people listen.

Starting point is 00:17:03 Totally, totally. And I know you're, you're spewing on cause you're in this every day and you're like, these are some really easy tips, but for somebody who is listening, who may not be familiar with paid search at all, I know there's a lot of people who have early startups or are in brands that have never really dabbled in paid search, even though it seems like a good place to begin. What would you say, how do you know, like, what's a good indicator of these paid search ads are working? Well, one, like be wary of benchmarks because every like, even within an industry, if you get those, but I think like you have this, I think you have to have an understanding of like what your like business like numbers are in terms of like this gets maybe a bit too technical for

Starting point is 00:17:50 what you're asking but like if you have uh like a payback period or like a cac like a customer acquisition cost like you need to know those things and like you start with that and then you back out like what should be like your cost per mql like what should be your like conversion rates based on like the traffic that you have like you kind of have to reverse engineer that so i think in some maybe maybe that's not the best way to explain that but i think you don't have to like put yourself to like these certain numbers because you saw someone else or like an industry benchmark report, like what makes sense for your business. And I think like you just have to start somewhere and then identify because a lot of times you can see like you might just not be

Starting point is 00:18:36 targeting the right keywords or if you are like people are getting to your page and bouncing right away or your conversion rates are just really low, like you need to fix some things there. So yeah, I guess that's what I would say. Yeah, no, that makes total sense. Thanks so much. I feel like some of our listeners probably needed to hear that like entry level of like, okay, well I'm trying, but I don't know if anything's working. How do I know? And I think it really is individualized kind of like you said said, setting the or backing out of certain benchmarks to really see and understand what's working for your business. OK, let's just flip the script and go to paid social, because that's another thing that I'm even more familiar with than page search. I don't know anything about paid search. I was like, Cassie, you take those.

Starting point is 00:19:22 So you also mentioned in like our intake form and things like that, using paid social to build long term demand. Could you just share an example of a strategy that's worked in that area? Sure. Before I do, I will say, I think B2B paid social has been ruined by a lot of like people like myself that just knew search and then started to do social because they treated the platform like the same like LinkedIn or Facebook as the same way and it's so different so I think I've been in like a year plus recovery and I think I'm doing better now and I think I have some good things to share but I would say like they're so different like just the demand capture versus demand creation mindset's so different and I think I think it's really valuable like most people and like for

Starting point is 00:20:05 me like since I work for a Cisco company there's like 20 different paid teams and Crystal who works with me we're the only ones I think that do like paid search and paid social so it's like very different experiences but okay enough of uh preface so um yeah with like building like long-term demand, like again, like you, you can't look, you can't get so fixated on like the, if you're doing like a lot of lead generation that might look good at first, but like something that the reason why I started to change like that traditional approach was I was, I did those numbers. I looked at, we were getting very efficient, um, like conversions for a lot of like core audiences too. Like we had really pared down like our ICP audiences. We were looking at job tiles, like they were relevant, but then like looking at like, what is this actually turning

Starting point is 00:20:57 into? Um, like down the road and obviously paid social is very different. No one logs onto LinkedIn to download your guide for X, Y, Z, like through and like if they get some, if they see some value, they'll do that. But that doesn't mean they're ready to buy. So I think like getting out of that mindset and like the, the, and I'm certainly not the first person. And I've learned from lots of people like optimizing for like in feed consumption is like, by far, like my biggest thing that I do now. And that's why we run a ton of video content. For several reasons, like, one, we have a ton of really, really good videos, like from our, we're an event company. So we have a lot of virtual events, we speak out a lot of things. So there have a lot of virtual events. We speak out a lot of things. So there's a lot of quality content there. That's great for that more like top of funnel where you're just trying to like give people valuable information. And like, I know that's even generic in and of itself, like give people valuable information. So like to break it

Starting point is 00:21:59 down, like for us, like we're speaking to a lot of event marketers, field marketers. So like, okay, there's been a ton of virtual events the last few years. Everyone's fatigued. So like our events team did, I think this was like last fall, like a whole series on like, how do you like get past that? What are like specific ways that you can like break through that fatigue? Like, what are some things that you can do to kind of like throw wrinkles into your events and get people to engage and like speak? So that has nothing to do with our product or anything like that. But like

Starting point is 00:22:29 the point is like, you're kind of building trust and that's just like the first prong of that. And there's lots of companies that do this really, really well. Like Cognizant is a company that I've looked at a lot to get some inspiration behind what they do. But then from there, like really breaking that down and like with video too, you can remarket to people that viewed those videos and then you can give them more product specific videos at some point. And with that too, like think like very native,

Starting point is 00:23:00 like in feed consumption, like you don't want this very like b2b box cutter type ad you want just something like this like we're we have a podcast for um that we launched like a year ago and recently like we cut down some of those podcasts episodes where we're interviewing like some guests that are speaking about some of these things like we're running those as ads or we're about to we haven't launched them yet but like taking that type of stuff like that just builds lots of trust um to start with and then like you're building you're accumulating like an audience that's engaged with you and they trust you that you're not just trying to like sell them right away but then like you're it's more than

Starting point is 00:23:41 like thought leadership um it is that i guess i just don't like using that term because it has different connotations but um you're giving lots of value without asking for anything and there will be a time that you might ask like hey like come to this event or something like we'll tell you more and like then if people are raising their hand like more of like giving people value and letting them come to you versus like trying to just like pull them in the door all the time um so yeah like i'm huge on video we We do a ton of that. We still, we still run like lead gen because we just our marketing model, like we need to get that type of attribution. So there, I get it for companies that aren't in that spot where you can just run video. Like we still do

Starting point is 00:24:18 a combination of that, but yeah, I'm like super passionate about this. So sorry if I talked too long about it, but No, that's totally great. I love hearing your perspective. And you mentioned a lot about video content. What platforms are you seeing that video content really thrive in, in terms of paid ads? Well, for us, it's primarily LinkedIn, because that's where our audience is. But that doesn't mean that's certainly not the only one we have, have run stuff on facebook and we do have audience tools that help us target better on facebook it's just every b2b marker knows like it's challenging but i've i've seen lots of we we have we have actually um driven opportunities through running stuff on facebook so it's it's possible it's difficult. And honestly, so it's funny

Starting point is 00:25:06 because like I work in paid social, but I, the only like social account I have is LinkedIn. Like I don't, I'm not on TikTok. Like I see people posting stuff like on LinkedIn from their TikTok account. I'm like, Oh, like that makes sense. It looks easy to like create videos. Like I know people are like moving in that direction. We'll see if TikTok is even like allowed. I know there's all the legislation. Yeah. Who knows? Battles going on. But I mean, like LinkedIn is always great for B2B, but I would, I would say even like YouTube is a great place too. Cause it's just, it's so cheap compared to LinkedIn, like LinkedIn's much more expensive, but then the trade-off is like the audience targeting, like Google's in-market audiences are a good starting point, but they're certainly not as good as like for us, like we've

Starting point is 00:25:51 exported a ton of job titles from our CRM. We're targeting known job titles outside of just the obvious ones. And that's really allowed us to scale. So yeah, that's what I would say. Yeah. I've seen a lot more people lean into video and LinkedIn lately too. And because it used to be really text-based posts or like maybe an image here and there, or now they have newsletters, which is really cool, but I've seen a lot more video and I'm really curious, not even just on the paid social side, but even on the organic side, like how that performance is, is doing. So thanks so much for sharing that. But if somebody hasn't done a paid social campaign for their business yet, what would you say are your top three tips for getting started? We'll put a number on it.

Starting point is 00:26:39 Think optimizing for in feed. So like people don't want to click or LinkedIn doesn't want you to like click outside the platform. So like for a video, like we try to do like 30 seconds to like a minute and a half, which sounds very long and it is long, but if the value's there, it's fine. But just like that in-feed consumption and like LinkedIn also has an ad type now, like instead of, um, like native lead gen forms, there's the document ads. And I'd like ran a test on this and it was crazy to see like how much more like in feed consumption there was. Cause you could just like how people post, you know, like PDFs and you can swipe through it. It's like same thing. Um, so like that type of mindset and getting content that works for that is huge.

Starting point is 00:27:26 The second thing would be like segmenting your audiences. Like you can get a ton. What I love about paid social, like it's become a huge like feedback loop for our team. Like we've shared insights on like for us, like we have virtual in-person and hybrid event types are like very different use cases. And we saw like months before other teams, other teams started talking about, like, there was a huge shift to like in person, like in the fall. And we saw that based on like the view rates and like the engagement rates on the different, like types of ads that we were running. Cause we had specific

Starting point is 00:28:01 ads running around those things. So it can be like a really, really good feedback loop. So I would say, I guess I was talking about content segmentation, but if you have audience segmentation as well, you can see like what audiences are engaging more because for us, we have like three or four different like ICP audiences and it's different across. So that's a easy and good way to do.

Starting point is 00:28:35 I think the third one, I would just say, like, make it very native, for lack of a better word, and just like not highly produced. Like, and this is why it's great. Like, I mean, I see what you guys post sometimes and like just doing cutdowns from your podcast like that it's easy just to like get a feel for like what you're talking about like the topic and the people and I can't remember who it was but Cassie I remember when I first like came across you on LinkedIn you were who was it it's the guy with Panda Doc Travis I saw I think you were on like his show and I love like his like stuff is hilarious and just I love his his marketing I like um I saw it like that's how I think we first came in contact

Starting point is 00:29:13 um so like a silly example but like a relevant one I think like that just resonates with people so yeah yeah really really great tips I agree I I think the stuff and when I was early on learning about ads years ago, people always told me you want an ad to not feel like an ad in the platform. So like you said, as organic as possible, as native to the platform as possible. So it doesn't make someone want to jump past it immediately. And so that's, that's a fantastic tip. I do want to ask you about LinkedIn. I know you touched a little bit on it already, but we're huge LinkedIn fans. LinkedIn, I will say for me personally is the only advertising platform I haven't dabbled a lot in. And we've tested it a little bit. We've tried with marketing happy. I rejected, which we'll touch on in a minute. No, go ahead, Erica. What happened? I was just saying we tried and we had in our creative, we had like a glass of wine or something and it was rejected because you can't advertise alcohol or I can't remember the exact wording on LinkedIn. And we were like, okay, let's take a step back and try again.

Starting point is 00:30:28 Yeah. Which I, which I totally get it. I mean, I've, I've worked with, like, I've, I had a CBD client in the past, like I get the parameter. So I wasn't surprised by that, but learning, learning curves for sure. So going back to LinkedIn specifically really quick, what overall strategies do you see are performing well on the platform just overall? And that could be in terms of the creative. And again, you touched on this a little bit. So extending out of that creative targeting,

Starting point is 00:30:57 any tips that you can share for someone that's new on LinkedIn advertising? Well, one, like LinkedIn will tell you you need at least like, and they kind of stole this from or borrowed this from Google. Like they'll, they'll tell you you need like a certain audience size. Like, I think it's like 50 K, which is good. Like it's going to be cheaper traffic. Um, and a lot of like we run audiences that are larger than that, but most of our audiences are much smaller than that. And it's going to be expensive. But the reason why I'm saying this is i think um the like the audience is everything like in in paid social tart and just paid social campaigns like the audience and obviously like the content the creative um so i think like if you don't have a solid understanding of who your core audience is or

Starting point is 00:31:41 like where you're who you're trying to reach, like you're just going to be wasting money. So that's why like we did pull, like we knew the obvious titles to target, but that's where we did a CRM analysis. And there was a lot of job titles. We were like, I never would have guessed this would have been something we should target. So if you have that type of data, that's super helpful. But like you can start small. I mean, you can start small to like on other platforms like you could you asked about LinkedIn, though. Sorry. So I would say like, I mean, video is like really good. It's just it is more expensive. But I mean, it's like, it's kind of the trade off of just personal things in life

Starting point is 00:32:24 to like, do you want to buy like the really cheap thing that's going to break like in a year? Or do you want to spend like five times as much, but it's going to last like for 10 years? Like it's that type of stuff. So like LinkedIn, like the audiences, if your audience is there and that's one thing too, like maybe you need to vet, like, is your audience even there? Like if it's marketers, like for sure, if it's sales, for sure if it's sales for sure like if it's it like maybe not so much like you have to understand that um and i think too like just making sure you have the content that's gonna resonate and it isn't super stale it's not you know like what you were saying cassie like it shouldn't seem like this ad that unless it's

Starting point is 00:33:03 like people do appreciate humor they do appreciate like obviously like the more um just human appeal like the emotion and things like that but that in and of itself isn't going to do anything unless it's leading them to like take an action or like take something away and they then think of you as like someone as like an expert on this topic or whatever solution industry so So yeah, I don't, I feel like I was half repeating myself and half not answering your question. So no, no, no, you're good. I totally get that though. Cause there's certain ads that I'll scroll by and you're right. You know, it's an ad, but you get drawn into that ad because of

Starting point is 00:33:39 the humor or whatever. There's a number of different examples that I can think of off the top of my head. I'm probably the worst person to be included in targeting anyways, because I save ads for like examples for clients and stuff. Like I never buy anything, but I'm like, Oh, I'm going to bookmark this and save it for whatever. Um, but going back. Okay. So thinking about marketing happy hour as an example, we're a podcast, a digital online community. Would you say for a brand like us is LinkedIn the place to start? Or would you recommend for a brand that's new to advertising start off of LinkedIn first, or does it really depend on audience? And then I love what you said about demand creation versus demand capture like we're newbies to advertising do you

Starting point is 00:34:27 think linkedin is a good place to start or is that just dependent on what we're trying to do in a current time let me ask you a question first like is the goal to like grow like podcast following or just like is that is that the main goal? Listener base, I'd say. Yeah. I mean, LinkedIn is certainly a relevant channel. It's just going to be, I think there's like cheaper ways. Like, honestly, like I haven't done it for years, but I ran Spotify ads for a client one time. And like, you can, you know, the targeting there isn't as robust as other platforms.

Starting point is 00:35:01 It's probably changed a lot since I've been there. But if you can target people that are like actively like listening to marketing podcasts or like Tik TOK on it, that's probably a good one too. I don't know anything about Tik TOK targeting, but like, if you're able to find like the, and I know Tik TOK too is a cheaper platform because it's still newer, even though it's massive now, like the Cpms are

Starting point is 00:35:26 just going to be so much cheaper than linkedin so because i think too like one of the biggest i guess i would probably say you don't need to spend that much money because if you just keep doing what you're doing and posting stuff on linkedin um just organically and like growing and connecting with you know people that are, that have huge followings and you can kind of like hitch onto that, like that viral effect, I feel like is, it's going to, it's going to bring probably more consistent listeners too. And just more, I don't know, I think it's going to be better quality. So yeah, I think, I mean, that'd be hard. Like if, if we were actually sitting down and having like some type of consultation, like I think drafting like a LinkedIn strategy, like you

Starting point is 00:36:09 would have the content, but like, I don't know if it'd be the best channel to do that. So like you could test things on, on those other ones, but. Yeah, no, appreciate that. Well, I want to ask too, and just get your feedback on this. So what you just mentioned to made me think of something. So are you saying all brands obviously run ads, but having an organic strategy as well, that's really strong. So that when someone does land on your page, they see consistent content. Do you feel like that helps the impact of paid even further? Or what's your opinion on that because I know a lot of times people will put full force all of their their thought process and brainstorming and strategy into paid and sometimes that organic kind of goes to the wayside so any tips on that overall

Starting point is 00:36:57 yeah I mean obviously I'm speaking from like the paid perspective and not the organic but I do think it's changed so much especially like on on LinkedIn, like you'll be, and this is the case for like people buying, but also where people are working. It's like people are buying and like working for people, like not companies anymore. So I think just like the personal, I mean, I've seen people post about like, they are responsible for like, you know, hundreds of thousands of like dollars and like opportunities and like close one just from their own personal account. And I think too, like I get an image and just like slap on some like basic ad copy and launch it. Like we are like spending lots of time being like very creative.

Starting point is 00:37:55 Like again, that in feed consumption, like it's the same thing like for organic. So I, to answer your question though, especially like more on like the website side or like the content that you have, like, I think, I don't know if you're alluding to this, but it would be a waste of money for you to like grow, so to speak with paid, but then you're bringing people to like an empty site or there's just not a lot of quality there. So, you know, it'd be like, you're just starting a new restaurant and like you advertise all this great food and people come and like your kitchen is empty or something like that just wouldn't I'm just thinking of weird analogies to me I don't

Starting point is 00:38:28 know what's going on um but I love it I think like it is kind of like that so I think yeah like you have and that's the other thing too that's why I've gotten so much closer to like content and that side of things because like that's what feels paid like it's not the other way around you don't like do run paid campaigns and then like go the opposite way. Like it always starts organically and like what you actually have, like with, and it goes back to like, to the brand strategy and your strategic narrative and like the, the don't know what you'd say, like native ads and like boosted content that there's something that's doing really well organically that you then boost and then just compared to a regular ad on the platform. Have you seen a difference between those strategies? Yeah, good question.

Starting point is 00:39:21 And we have like we have boosted posts and, I don't know if I can give you the best answer because the stuff that we're boosting is more so if you're assuming you're and we've done this before like when we boost a post like we're picking the audiences that are most important to us on the paid side so like whatever is most relevant so you should see like that similar performance but um yeah and i've seen people to like take screenshots of like their like LinkedIn post or something and then run that as an ad like I get those types of ads sometimes and they're great because it also shows too just like the social proof almost of like you know 100 plus people liked that post and there's a ton of comments and then there's just that um that trust I guess of like oh this is interesting and it sticks out to you so got. Gotcha. Yeah, that's really cool. And another example, we were talking earlier about

Starting point is 00:40:28 making everything seem, you know, not so like in your face, this is an ad, please buy now, et cetera. Recently I did see on TikTok, there's a deodorant company, I believe, that's advertising a like competition between their employees. And each employee has their own like bundle of whatever their products are. And it's like a competition to where, you know, they win a prize if the most people see this ad and buy from them. It's just really interesting because I came across that and I was like, obviously this is an ad, but it's a really clever way to kind of like engage with the audience and make it feel a little more organic versus just buy now. So I thought that was really interesting too. I wanted to mention that, but yeah. Do you have any predictions about like the future of paid media paid ads paid search all the things

Starting point is 00:41:27 um with the emergence of the some of these new platforms like tiktok like i guess there's a new platform called lemon eight who even knows what's going on over there um and then just oversaturation of noise online as we continue just being in the digital age ai obviously has to be mentioned like that i feel like that's everywhere. I'm not gonna start talking about chat GPT, but I do think like, I do, one, I do think it's like obviously important. Like I know as marketers too,

Starting point is 00:41:58 like everyone's just like rolling their eyes over like, oh, we're gonna be replaced. It's like, no, we're not. It's just spitting out like obvious things. I just saw Travis and some other like people posted, but it was hilarious. They like did a little exercise of like, it was so funny anyways. But I do think like leveraging, like there's a tool that we just got that I'm excited to try like Jasper AI, like for like writing copy, it's going to, I think, save a ton of time as marketers and i think incorporating that into what you're doing but still like nothing's changed nothing's gonna

Starting point is 00:42:30 change in terms of like good marketing like quote unquote like at the end of the day you still need to like have a really good product but then more importantly or not equally importantly you need to communicate like why your product or service is so important to the right audience and like understanding who that audience is and delivering on like that, that value that, that you say you have, um, that that's still going to continue. But I do think, I mean, I've seen people talk recently, like with Google ads and search, like it's going to change a ton. Um, I think the article I saw was like in five years or something. I think it's gonna be way sooner than that. Um, Google has, and this this has been for years like i've been in paid search for like six years like when i first started the amount of control that you had as a in your account is way

Starting point is 00:43:15 more than it is now um and so i do think it's it's really gonna you're gonna have less control like on ad platforms but i i still think like at the end of the day and like what you said like there's so much noise online there's just so much content out there um i think you have to be original and you have to like think outside of the box and i think like that's what i'm trying to grow and as a marketer for a b2b like company inside a fortune 100 company. It's like, I want to think outside the box. I don't want people to think like, oh, this is just like a large company.

Starting point is 00:43:52 So it's just like boring and blah, blah, blah. Like thinking outside of the box is going to be so crucial. And I think specifically for paid, like you do, there's going to be less pulling levers. And like, yes, I'd still say the basics and the right account setup is really important, but you have to evolve your skillset. If you're a paid marketer listening to this,

Starting point is 00:44:12 that's why I've spent so much time investing in learning content. That's why I post myself on LinkedIn. It's an exercise for me and it's made me a better marketer because the communication skills and being able to get people's attention like is so important. So yeah, I don't, I guess those are my kind of like, there's no hot takes here really. It's just kind of basic, but yeah, no, it's good. It's a good

Starting point is 00:44:39 reminder. I think we always need to be reminded that, well, for one, technology is not going to take away our jobs anytime soon. I think we have to eliminate the fear, especially of AI and just know how to use it and allow it to complement what we're doing versus think it's going to take us over and just not use it at all. Because I know for me, I love chat GPT. I feel like I talk about it way too much, but it's, it's saved me so much time over the last few months. And we're actually having an AI expert come on the show soon to kind of share with us how to create content more efficiently and all this stuff. So super excited

Starting point is 00:45:16 to learn from her. Yes, but no, thank you for those tips. I agree. I think just creativity, thinking outside of the box. I think all those are as, as people get more creative and as technology evolves and the things that we can do with technology evolves, um, people are going to look for more ways to be impressed and excited by new things and content. So anyways, Andrew, this has been absolutely fantastic. And I was literally like Eric and I chat individually just to communicate during the episode. And I was telling her like,

Starting point is 00:45:49 I have so many other questions and just things I could ask, but we'll have to have you come on again and just chat more. Yeah, part two coming soon. But anyways, before we close out too, just got to know where everyone can follow along with you and everything that you're doing.

Starting point is 00:46:04 You mentioned LinkedIn and that being your main platform, but, uh, tell us all, all the details there. Yeah, super easy. It's just, it's just LinkedIn. I have, I've seen people talk about this. I do have a Facebook account because I need one to access our Facebook ad manager. So I think I have zero, I have zero friends. So don't try to follow me. I'm who uses Facebook anymore, but, um, or become, or become Andrew's only friend on Facebook. Yes. Oh my gosh. Yeah. But yeah, just LinkedIn. I'm, I'm pretty active when I can be in trying to be more active. Um, so yeah, definitely connect with me, ask me questions, point out anything silly that I said, it's fine. I welcome it. So yeah, that's awesome. Awesome. Well, Andrew, thank you so much. This

Starting point is 00:46:53 has been such a pleasure. Thanks for taking us back to a paid media discussion. We certainly needed it. And I learned a ton. So thank you so much. Great. Thanks for having me. It was super fun. Thanks to Andrew for joining us this week. I have a lot to learn when it comes to paid ads, so this conversation was beyond helpful. If you enjoyed today's episode, please subscribe to the show and review Marketing Happy Hour on your favorite podcast platform. We'll see you next week for another new episode. Thanks for tuning in. We are so excited to share that our first ever free Marketing happy hour digital resource is now available. Download the dream career game plan today at marketinghappyhr.com forward slash freebie. That's marketinghappyhr.com forward slash freebie. This five-step workbook will guide you through defining your goals, building your network, diversifying your skills, influencing where you're at and investing in your growth.

Starting point is 00:48:05 Cassie and I created this resource with marketing careers in mind, but the framework can be applied to any industry. Our hope is that this workbook will help you truly elevate your career, whether you're in the market for a new position or just looking to make your mark in your current organization. No matter where this resource finds you, we are cheering you on every step of the way. So go check it out at marketinghappyhr.com forward slash freebie to download and make your career dreams come true.

Marketing Happy Hour - Paid Search + Paid Social 101: Test and Learn | Andrew Harder of Cisco

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